The present invention is directed to antenna (spatial) signal processing useful in wireless communication applications, such as short-range wireless applications.
Antenna diversity schemes are well known techniques to improve the performance of radio frequency (RF) communication between two RF devices. Types of antenna diversity schemes include antenna selection diversity and maximal ratio combining. An antenna selection diversity scheme selects one of two antennas for transmission to a particular communication device based on which of the two antennas best received a signal from the particular communication device. On the other hand, maximal ratio combining schemes involve beamforming a signal to be transmitted by two or more antennas by scaling the signal with an antenna weight associated with each antenna. A signal received by a plurality of antennas can also be weighted by a plurality of receive antenna weights. Selection of the antenna weights to optimize communication between two communication devices is critical to the performance of maximal ratio combining schemes.
There is room for improving the maximal ratio combining antenna processing schemes to optimize the link margin between two RF communication devices.